Gaia has been reading through the speech Amber Rudd is making at today’s Aviva climate change conference and has fallen head over heels for the new Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

She starts off by paying due lip service to the we-really-ought-to-do-something-about-climate-change brigade:

“We are committed to taking action on climate change and we are clear that our long-term economic plan goes hand in hand with a long-term plan for climate action. Climate action is about security, plain and simple – economic security. If we don’t act, it will become increasingly hard to maintain our prosperity, protect our people and conserve our countryside.”

Then she correctly identifies what is really driving the climate change activists:

“It cannot be left to one part of the political spectrum to dictate the solution and some of the loudest voices have approached climate action from a left wing perspective. So I can understand the suspicion of those who see climate action as some sort of cover for anti-growth, anti-capitalist, proto-socialism.”

And finishes with a sound quote from Maggie:

“But in her 2002 book ‘Statecraft’, Margaret Thatcher was also sensible enough to ask the question “can global warming be checked at an acceptable price?”

If there really is a genuine threat from global warming the solution can and has to be, as Rudd correctly says, practical. The bottom line is we have to make sure that climate change action is pro-growth, pro-business, using free enterprise and competition to drive down the costs of climate action. That is still an “if”…